Are A.I. Clones the Future of Dating? I Tried Them for Myself.

It is widely believed that artificial intelligence could change the world, from solving climate change to curing cancer. Some even fear it will destroy humanity. But can it fix my dating life?

A growing number of companies believe the answer is yes. As chatbots like ChatGPT improve, their use in our personal and even romantic lives is becoming more common. So much so, some executives in the dating app industry have begun pitching a future in which people can create A.I. clones of themselves that date other clones and relay the results back to their human counterparts.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of the dating app Bumble, called them “dating concierges.” George Arison, the chief executive of Grindr, referred to them as “duplicates.” Internally, some companies are using another term, Mr. Arison said in an interview: “synthetics.”

For a lot of people, this idea probably sounds like a dystopian nightmare, something out of an episode of Netflix’s “Black Mirror.” But as a single 26-year-old living in San Francisco, I was intrigued by the idea, so I set out to try the A.I. dating route myself.

My strategy included a combination of A.I. apps, websites and subscription services that all promised to improve my dating experience. Some resembled regular dating apps, while others were third-party platforms or coaching services.

The most popular dating apps have yet to make their A.I. clones available to the public, but a group of smaller start-ups have. To create my clones, most of these apps had me train an A.I. bot through conversation, as if I were texting a close friend. Eventually, the bots personalized their speech and mannerisms to imitate my own, a sort of EliGPT. Then they looked for love.